Reporting Services :
By Vijay Mohire, MCSD in .NET
Reasons for new Technology Hype in areas of Reporting.
Reports were difficult to create
Reports were not easy to manage and integrate in different applications
Customization was limited like easy of naviagtion and Master-Detail depection
Not afforadable to Small Companies
Non Secure nature of Reports
Microsoft's solution to overcome all the above:
New User friendly GUI Controls that can handle data directly in various forms, intelligent controls.
Concept of Sub reporting and Open standard Technology based on XML and Web Services.
Centralized Report generation
Reports are compiled as .NET Assembly hence Integration with other Applications is easy.
Role based security setting and well integrated with Windows/Web Apps and backward compatable.
Very less coding and very much User friendly APIs. The services makes use of its own Internal Meta-data and Database repository for storing data that needs to be processed.
Reporting Life cycle: 3 main phases as below
Report Authoring : This is the first stage in Report generation. Here the Author defines the report , its properties, sets the interactivity and manages the look and feel.
Specify a Data source for a Report to consume data and Dataset is an entity where the Queries for that data source is written and results are held. Wide sources like Oracle (thro Oracle call Interface) SQL Server 7 and above, ODBC OLE DB, Custom.
Data Source come in 2 scopes : Shared and Report . Shared can be used across reports whereas Report level scope is for one report only.
Dataset can be made from Tables, Views or Stored procedures.
Report Management:Activities are centered on the administration of the published report from previous stage.Functions like when reports are refreshed, who has access to reports.Each Report is specified in XML and stored in a file with an RDL file extension (Report definition Language) .Every GUI element can be programmed and well integrated with IE Office, SPP server and services.Supports Basic, NTLM, Passport, Kerberos. Role based settings can be configured.
Report Delivery :Deployment related functionalities , how and when Reports need to be presented , sent to Subscribers in which format to which device etc.Wide range like HTML, CSV, TIFF Excel, XML, PDF etc. Types of delivery: On Demand, Simple and Data Driven Subscriptions.
Features :
Report generation : Type can be Tabular or Matrix .Tabular is in Table form and Matrix is a cross-tab report which supports grouping and enables drill down both row and column wise , this is a beauty of Matrix , which eliminates use of Tree controls for hierarchial representation. We have many options like Block display, showing Sub totals ( like the CUBE and ROLLUP commands of SQL) another awesome beauty of Reporting services.We can include a sub report in a report place different charts like PIE,SCATTER,STOCK and many more.
Customizing Reports: Can be done in many ways like simple drag and drop , specifying properties,enterying formulas, all these are saved in RDL file which is a standard format for Reporting Services.We can go in for ,format header footer ,Expression Builder to generate Expressions , as of today expression are in VB.NET language.
Interactivity at runtime : Use of Parameters to allow users to filter data on a report. 2 types of Parameters: Data set and report. Data set params affect the rows of data returned by the data set and Report params are used to prompt the user for input.Filter are another way to restrict data on a report.
Document map: Is a type of TOC that is generated when report is rendered as HTML, PDF or Excel format. We can add Document map labels.
Book Marks: Are similar to Document map but exists in the report unlike as seperate entity as a Document map. You can assign Book marks in a Report similar to Doc map labels.
Drillthrough: To invoke a sub report from the current report you use this Drill through.
Drill Down: To see more details of a report we have a + and - symbols which show details, this was difficult to implement we used to use TREE or such Hierarchial structure of populate a CELL of DataGRID Table with another DataGrid , hectic coding , wasn't it .
Final Note :
There a lot of Wizards and Helper toos that come with the SQL Server Reporting Services which are very much useful and Handy for an ordinary Layman to work with, also tools that a Developer can use to do coding for Extensibility of the Report generation process.
All in all this a Win-Win situation for the Developers , Customers since there is More fun involved in Report generation rather than expertise.
An ideal TOOL for Advertising companies, Newspaper producers, Large scale Messaging related to Subscribers of E- related Magazines etc.
I am experimenting this TOOL on a Trial Version right now and will be using this with the License copy for my Project based on Report Generation for DataWareHouse for one of my reputed clients from UK.
I wish to see a Paper from Microsoft on their MCSD Track list, i will be pleased to clear that at the earliest.
Hope u too do it !!!!!!!!
Vijay works as Module Lead for Wipro Technologies, Bangalore , India and his interests include writing articles for .NET paltform based language, framework and database related to Microsoft Technologies.
He can be reached at vijay.mohire@wipro.com
